Naples Capodichino Airport to close all of November for runway works; shuttles link passengers to Salerno

Naples Capodichino Airport will be closed to traffic for the whole of November while major works are carried out, focusing primarily on the runway. The project is valued at 30 million and involves a major refurbishment of the runway to carry out exceptional maintenance aimed at ensuring safety and efficiency.

Travellers will need to use Salerno Costa d'Amalfi and Cilento Airport (Salerno-Pontecagnano) instead. To ease transfers, Gesac, the company managing the Naples airport, together with Busitalia Campania, has launched a shuttle service between Naples Piazza Garibaldi and Salerno Airport. It offers eight daily journeys in each direction, with timetables designed around flight departures and arrivals. The fare is 12 euros per passenger per journey, payable on board by electronic payment.

The number of daily services between Salerno Airport and Salerno railway station has also been increased, while connections to Potenza, Eboli, Battipaglia and the Amalfi Coast remain in place.

Gesac also has a masterplan for modernising and developing Naples Airport, which envisages passenger numbers rising from the current 13 million a year to 17.3 million by 2035, without extending operating hours. Investments total 250 million, of which 230 million from the private sector and 20 million from the public sector, to be funded by the Campania Region, to be completed over ten years. About 170,000 square metres of new land will be acquired, and plans include a second terminal for non-Schengen flights, new aircraft parking stands, a new cargo and logistics area and an airport hotel.

Gesac manages the Naples and Salerno airports and is controlled by 2i Aeroporti Spa (83.1 per cent), with the Metropolitan City holding 11.9 per cent and the Salerno Airport Consortium 5 per cent.

Closing an airport outright for a month, rather than staging the work around night windows, is the route taken when runway rehabilitation cannot be done alongside live operations. That choice is easier where the same operator also runs a second airport nearby: Gesac holds both Naples and Salerno, so displaced traffic stays inside one network and one set of commercial relationships.

For business aviation, a closure of this length removes a major southern Italian gateway from the planning map for the whole month. Operators and handlers serving the Naples and Amalfi Coast area have to route through Salerno, where the ground links announced by Gesac and Busitalia Campania become part of the trip.

The masterplan frames the runway work as one step in a ten-year development. It sets a target of 17.3 million passengers by 2035 without longer operating hours, which places the weight of growth on capacity such as a second terminal and additional stands rather than on extra operating time. The mix of 230 million private and 20 million public funding, the latter tied to the Campania Region, is the part of that plan that still has to be delivered.